


And the Tide Is Turning

by Sand_Cursive



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 10:23:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5924953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sand_Cursive/pseuds/Sand_Cursive
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They know.</p><p>And they don't want to</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Did you see me on the cover

Here, in the glimmering lights along the Seine, he waits slung across the low steel arms of the bridge. An arm drops languorously towards the water, eyes cast out along the horizon. He can hear him, sort of, in the way he imagines animals can hear one another, can communicate without any speech or sound. Plagg shifts in the eddies of his consciousness, dark flotsam in darker waters.

Tonight is not one of the nights that he can calm the sea.

He knows.

He tries not to of course. She’d been so plain about her feelings, and these were boundaries that he wasn’t going to cross. Not if she wanted him to stay on the other side.

His tail swings languidly in the breeze coming off the water. It’s taking her longer than usual to find him, this time. Maybe she isn’t going to. Maybe she isn’t even trying.

He wonders, idly, if she’s working right now.

“Hello, Chat.”

He turns slowly, and smiles a lazy smile at her. “My Lady. I wasn’t sure if you were coming.”

A scoff. “Like I would leave my alley cat dangling over the river Seine.”

He shrugs like he wasn’t sure, but his smile tells her that he knows better. He trusts her to the ends of the world and back - he would believe anything she wanted him to. “And where to tonight, my Lady?”

She smiles like she has a secret he doesn’t know about, and she spins behind him, vaulting through the supports and swinging up onto the bridge. Her steps are too light even for his enhanced sense of hearing to pick up. He knows if he waits, just a few seconds more, she’ll disappear into the air and he’ll never be able to find her. He’s already running beside her before she’d ever have to check. He always is.

She never checks.

He chases her through the sunlit streets, the roads already aglow with festive evening lights spilling from storefronts and windows and the bare traffic of the lazy night. There is a joy in the movement - of running and jumping and swinging and leaping. A liberating freedom. The wind brushes through his hair, whips his leather tail behind him. He catches the scent of Paris at night; crisp and sweet and still a little hot. She’s already racing forwards, pulling ahead, tantalizingly just out of reach in so many ways and if he could just catch up —

She drops out of sight between the edge of one gabled roof and the next. He follows suit, blindly, trusting. She is always there to catch him and besides. Cats always land on their feet.

He lands on the ground, whisper-soft, and straightens and the world changes. The small courtyard they’re standing in is filled with diaphanous light, sparkling and shifting like bright clouds against the walls. It’s mesmerizing. Beautiful. He looks at her and she smiles so bright, the rainbows catching in her hair, in her eyes, on the curve of her hip.

“What do you think?”

He bows, low at the waist. “My Lady does not disappoint. Clearly, she knows the most intimate secrets of Purr-is.”

She gasps a laugh. “Sacrilege,” she murmurs, and he straightens just enough to wiggle his eyebrows at her.

“It’s nearly as beautiful as you.”

She is not too modest to smile, even if she does shake her head at him. His flirtations are so familiar to her now they roll off her shoulders like water, barley glancing. She appreciates them without taking their full intent. She believes he thinks she is beautiful. But she won’t look any farther than that.

“It would be a good place for a date, don’t you think?” And he almost can’t believe she’s asked. His heart leaps into his throat, and suddenly he is scrambling for words, broken under the suggestion of her question. But she continues too quickly for him to organize his thoughts. “Keep it in mind, my masked companion. If you’re as smooth underneath it as you are with it on.”

She twirls under the lights, so graceful. “Be grateful that I’m sharing it with you. A place for the two of us and the people we are underneath.”

He looks away, then, knowing her too well to think this is a door into her other life. It is, in fact, the opposite; she trusts him so much not to pry that she is sharing this: a secret, between the two of them. As they are now and as the strangers that will never meet.

“How does it happen?” He asks, desperate to divert his thoughts.

She points a slender finger upwards, at the windows running up every wall. Shining, delicate glass sits in every pane, collections of crystals and hanging ornaments just visible behind them. “These apartments sit on top of a crystal shop,” she explains, dancing slowly along the perimeter, following the lights as they fade. “I don’t know how they got the idea to do this, but it’s breathtaking, isn’t it?”

 _Almost as breathtaking as you,_ he thinks, but he responds instead with “Yes.”

She turns to him, and the last of the light is reflected brightly in her eyes. The air is colder now, the sun finally sunk below the horizon. Without warning, her yo yo whips just past the tips of his ears, and she laughs wildly as he flinches below it. She throws it again, with intent, and swings out of the small square and out into the night. “I’ll race you!” she yells down at him, and he tenses his legs and springs upwards. Following. Always following.

She beats him, as she always does, at the same place they end every night, even though he thinks too much of her to ever let her win. The yo yo is an unfair advantage.

They sit side by side, a chaste amount of space between them, and he turns his head slightly and tries. He is desperate not to notice it, the familiar smell of lavender and sugar and flour and vanilla. She sits unaware, gazing lovingly down at the city, legs swinging beneath her. So, unfairly, carefree. Her hands play with the string of her yo yo, twisting the thread in an elaborate game of cat’s cradle. He resists the urge to bat at the yo yo, swinging like a pendulum over her lap.  
  
She is so sure in her movements she never looks down. The tangle transforms under skilled fingers from stars to flowers to le Tower Eiffel. Moving nimbly, precise. _She knits_ , he thinks, and then pretends he hadn’t. It bats itself around in his mind and he tries to drown it, but it bubbles to the surface and brings new gasps of air with it. _She’s creative. She makes things._

Some things are self-evident. To be Ladybug is to have imagination, creativity. It is to be a boundless well of ingenuity. But these are things that can manifest themselves differently in different people, and he knows he is treading too close to where she lives. So he looks away and pretends not to see it.

“I think the city is safe, tonight, my Lady,” he offers helpfully into the silent air. She hums agreement, then stretches and stands. The wind whips her hair back behind her, her bangs flying wildly over her face. He looks at her profile and tries not to study the curve of her jaw, the line of her nose. Tries not to see the girl underneath.

“Shall I accompany you home?” he offers, voice suggestive without realizing. She quirks an eyebrow at him and stares until he starts to go red around the ears she can’t see. “I think I’ll manage, my friendly alley-cat.”

She hoists the yo yo in her hands but doesn’t throw it. Not yet. “Make sure you get home soon. Get some sleep my feline friend.”

He looks purposely forward and smiles. “If that is my Lady’s wish.”

She laughs and jumps away, throwing her yo yo into the air and catching an upswing wide and sweeping and graceful. He turns away and pretends he doesn’t know which direction she is moving. And then after three, five, ten minutes, he hops gracefully down, right into the backyard of his own house.

 

* * *

 

It is always the trickiest, the morning after, to pretend. She walks into the classroom late and it is impossible not to notice her. The line of her jaw as her mouth works at her excuses. The bridge of her nose as she scrunches it up in frustration. She walks by him to her desk and smells _so good_ he has to work to keep from turning his head to follow her.

There is always something hidden in her bag that she brings out during their between class breaks. A ball of yarn or a scrap of fabric or even just the spotted fabric cover of her sketchbook. She draws and winds and knots and sews with an easy grace, and he has to look away from nimble fingers that dart and push and tug.

He had known, of course, what it meant to be Chat Noir. He had anticipated, had expected it: the reams of bad luck. It wasn’t a surprise. And yet. He goes home at the end of the day and lays still as stone on his bed and thinks perhaps this is the cruelest side effect of all: to know and do nothing. He wonders if he would trade it for ignorance. On bad days, he thinks he would.

Every night, though, he pushes open the sash on his window and jumps out into the cool night air. Even this, torture that it is, won’t keep him from finding his way back by her side. From making clever cat puns and chasing after her slender, powerful legs as she runs, from making sure that she is always, always safe. He would tell her who he was, if she would only ask. Instead, he stands by her side and pretends and pretends and pretends.

But he knows.

There is a great deal to be said for the virtues of Chat Noir, but chief among them is this: he respects her to the depths of his being. She doesn’t want him to know.

And so: he doesn’t.  


	2. I can wear it both ways

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So does she.

There is a relief in this kind of freedom. She is swinging from the rooftops, wind in her hair, legs arcing in graceful extension over the Paris streets. Light glitters on the lilting water of the Seine, and she can catch her shimmering impression as she flies across it: a red blur against a blue sky. She is not herself and for a moment, she is grateful.

It doesn’t take long to find.

There is screaming coming from the new developments on the 16th arrondissment, small figures scattering around what she could only describe, if _pressed_ , as an uneven, wobbling mass of aspic. Lighting on the ground she breaks into a run, immediately hooking herself around a streetlight to pull a child from being absorbed into the blob. “Ladybug!” they exclaim, and she smiles and offers a sweet “At your service!”

She turns the child on their way as Chat lands beside her, staff _clacking_ sharp on the stones. “Ladybug!” he starts, draping an elbow casually on her shoulder. He is so close, and she works hard not to notice whatever it is, that clean, fresh scent underneath the smell of warm leather. “What . . . What are we looking at?” The thing oozes slowly towards their feet, and they take a half-step backwards. It has all the horror and sinister intensity of bright pink gelatin.

She tilts her head to the side contemplatively. “I don’t know.”

“That’s not the akuma, is it?” he asks, pointing the staff in its direction.

She shrugs. While it’s true that she heard screaming before, the square is suddenly quiet. People are walking calmly on the other side, giving the mound a wide berth. Nothing particularly _bad_ seems to be happening. “Maybe the akuma . . . . _made_ this?”

“Oh,” he says. He seems at a loss. “Okay. Why?”

She shrugs again.

“Should I . . . Poke it?” he asks, but he’s already extending his baton, letting it carry itself towards the centre of the mass. It connects, then there’s a shudder and his arm jerks, and then it is pushed terribly, _achingly_ slowly in. Nothing happens.

“Huh,” she says, and he parrots it back at her. “Huh.”

“So,” he starts, and turns to look at her, arm still extended. She nods. “Right. For now, let’s just keep people away from it.” He smiles, offers a salute and makes to pull his baton back. It sticks, fast. He scowls, pulls again, harder.

And then it explodes.

They’re covered in showering chunks of pink jelly, and it is sticky and slimy and so, so _cold_. She shudders, half with disgust, and says a silent prayer of thanks that her suit is functionally melded to her skin because otherwise she is sure that this stuff would be _everywhere_.  
  
Chat lets out a yowl. “Definitely not the akuma!” he shouts, abandoning his baton. His leg tenses (not that she’s noticed, not that she can see the curve of his calf underneath the jelly and the leather), but he doesn’t move. The chunks of goo are anchoring them down.

The area is clear of civilians, at least. She breathes a sigh of relief and tosses her free arm skyward, “Lucky charm!”, and a socket wrench comes tumbling down into her outstretched hand. Her Chaton waits, patient, while she twists awkwardly towards the fire hydrant on the sidewalk.

“Close your eyes,” she cautions, as she works at the tight metal. He obeys immediately, no questions, and she thinks, suddenly, of a small dark space and anxious energy and the bright glow of a de-transformation. Her heart drums a sudden, panicked beat and she thinks _this isn’t then, it’s warm and bright and this is different_. But it’s too soon an event to have faded, and the blood pounds in her ears and her muscles tense and some terrible, unknowable feeling wavers deep inside her. The moment is washed away with the sudden burst of water, pink jelly and strange emotion swirling away into the sewers.

“Thanks,” he says, sauntering over to pluck his newly washed staff from the ground. She sighs, stretching her arms and trying to remove that kink she just put in her back. She smiles at him and feels fine. “I’m just going to take a quick break to . . . _recharge_. Keep on the lookout, and let me know if you find the akuma.”

He smirks, suddenly shaking the water out of his hair and sprinkling her with dew. “Of course, my Lady. You can leave it to me.” And he rocks back on his heel, he’s ready to go, so she doesn’t know why she does it. A gloved finger reaches out and traces the bottom edge of his mask, and he shifts into a statue: so still. But she just laughs and says. “You’ve got pink on your face. I guess it doesn’t wash off.”

He relaxes immediately. “I knew you couldn’t keep your hands off me. And anyway, so do —” The beeping of her miraculous interrupts them, and she jumps backwards, already flinging her yoyo into the sky. “I’ll see you later, Chat! Keep me posted!”

* * *

 

  
She’s crouched in an alley barely two blocks away, no sense of urgency in her steps but a predilection for caution keeping her close. Tikki hovers around her head, cookie twice her size clutched in tiny kwami paws.

“What do you think it is?”

The tiny bug shrugs, the cookie displaced more noticeably than her shoulders. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve seen something like this before,” she mumbles around mouthful of sweet.

Marinette hums. “I guess we’ll be finding out soon. Are you almost done with that cookie?”

Tikki gives her a look, barely a bite removed from the massive treat, and Marinette laughs. “Sorry. I guess it isn’t that urgent. At least, it doesn’t sound like there’s any trouble.”

“Chat can handle it for a little while,” Tikki agrees, voice almost teasing. Marinette lifts her head to agree, when the light in the alley shifts: a sudden hue change and she thinks, somewhat nonsensically _rose-coloured glasses_. She stands, fluid and graceful and forgets for a moment she isn’t wearing her mask. A large, wobbling wall of something bright and pink takes up the whole mouth of the alley, closing her in, and she could swear that it’s getting larger, and pinker, and suddenly it’s bearing down on her —

She turns on her heel, grabbing Tikki roughly out of the air and shoving her in her open purse, crumbling half the cookie in the process. She can hear a faint protest, even as she’s already slamming feet down on the pavement, trying for _fast_ and _away_ as well as her human legs can handle. It’s so close, so _fast_ for something so large and so sticky, and she can feel it lapping at the backs of her shoes when she hears the _clack_ of something soothingly familiar.

“Marinette!” he calls, and there is something about the cadence of her name in his mouth, something strange and familiar all at once, but she doesn’t have time to dwell on it. She thrusts her arm up, still running, and answers, “Chat!” He is a dark streak blotting out the ribbon of sky that runs down this alleyway, pulling her up out of the rising tide of pink glue that threatens to swallow her. She locks her arms around him and ducks her head against his chest and never doubts for a second that he will catch her when she calls.

He deposits her on a nearby balcony; the entrance into a hotel room suite that looks, mercifully, empty. “Duty calls, princesse,” he winks, saluting with one hand. His eyes flick from hers to her cheek so fast she thinks she’s imagined it, but he’s already falling back down to meet the crisis. She can see the constellations of him: a line of darkness in the light that makes a strange, angular pattern, moving from point to point like he’s connecting the dots to fill out a picture. All those civilians, saved. There is something, sudden and fierce and hot that flares in her chest, and she tamps it down as she opens that sliding glass door.

“Tikki. Spots on.”

* * *

 

“So we meet at last,” she quips, dropping lightly beside her cat as he stands, almost relaxed but for the line of his shoulders, the grip on his baton. His gaze doesn’t move from the person in front of them, a slight figure in a cloak made of rippling, antique pages. She cocks her head to the side. “You aren’t what I expected.”

The figure in front of them raises a severe brow. “What were you expecting?”

“Well,” he says, allowing an uneven grin to crawl over his face. “Something with more . . . pink?”

There’s a lazy flick of the wrist, and a ball of gelatin roughly the size of her head comes flying at them. They break apart at the hips, and she pretends not to notice the sudden friction of lost proximity. He swings, arcing high, and bats the ball right back. It splatters, fluorescent on the skirt, pages sticking together, words illegible.

“People these days,” the villain mutters darkly. Quiet, sinister. Angry. “No respect. Does no one value books anymore?”

Ladybug leaps backwards, yoyo already in hand as a glob of pink sprouts into existence at the place where she was once standing. Chat sprints around behind the figure as she throws her yoyo towards their face, ready to play off whatever she decides. They deflect, sending the spinning red circle right at her partner’s head. Chat bends backwards, flexible but ungainly, the cord catching at the ends of his hair.

“Maybe,” he pants, righting himself, “you could keep that to yourself.” Ladybug half laughs, half winces, jumping to his side as the villain wheels on him, striking out with her yoyo a second time. A sheaf of paper flies from the formless cloak, gliding under the string and jamming itself in the centre of the mechanism. The cord slackens, unable to rewind, and it falls at the villain’s covered feet.

“That’s not good,” she murmurs, already yanking it back in an uncontrolled arc. Her partner yelps and ducks a second time, and she barely catches the flying ball in the place where his head had been a moment ago. “Sorry.”

“What’s the plan?” he hisses from his crouch, eyeing the mass of papers wearily.

“Distraction,” she says, and he sighs long-sufferingly and says, “Your wish is my command, my Lady.”

He vaults off neatly behind her, and she stands tall and stalks forward, wrenching the page out of her yoyo. “I’m sorry things have come to this,” she says, and the figure laughs. “They’ll all be sorry. As soon as I have your miraculous, the world will learn to respect the written word.”

“I didn’t think someone so in love with books,” she says blithely, and a sneer appears above the high collar, “would be wasting words?”

“No more talking,” they say, and she laughs. And says, “You’re right.”

“You can read all about it tomorrow, instead!” The shout comes from behind, and the split second it takes for her partner’s baton to come crashing down is all the signal she needs. She throws her yoyo up, ready to end this entire ridiculous farce as soon as possible and go home. There’s a sudden flash, a glow and she hasn’t even said _Lucky Charm_ yet, but. When she blinks away the glare there’s a mess of pink goo at the end of her cord, affixing the yoyo to the brick wall behind her.

“What?” she exclaims, incredulous. “That’s not possible.”

“Ladybug!” Chat cautions, and she jumps away just in time, abandoning her yoyo to its post on the wall. She could curse.

“I think we’ve played for long enough,” the cloaked figure says. They throw both arms out and suddenly wells of something wobbly and pungent begin to sprout on all the nearby surfaces.

There’s an avalanche of stone and plaster and sound, a scream of metal as cars and lamp posts bend under the heavy weight. It’s denser and thicker and no longer the bright neon pink that made her think of slime and children’s toys. It grows darker and blacker and soon everything beneath it is swallowed in the shadow of its gelatinous void.

She jumps backwards, limited without her yoyo, and Chat is already running towards her, her arms already open to receive him, ready and trusting. They vault overhead, rolling apart as they hit the ridge of the roof, tumbling into motion.

“We need to draw them away,” she says, not panting despite the fact they still haven’t stopped. “It’s too crowded here, people are going to get caught up in all of this . . . goo.”

“What about your yoyo?”

“I’ll figure something out.”

He smiles, a mirror of the determination in her voice, and promises, “I’ll run interference. Get it out as soon as you can.”

She nods, running to the side of the building and sliding smoothly into the alley beneath. There’s darkness, and then yelling, and she can hear what sounds suspiciously like a smile from her unseen partner. The voices are getting softer.

“Tikki,” she whispers. “Spots off.”

“Marinette?” her kwami whispers in the dark. “What are you doing?”

“This seemed fastest. After all, where does my yoyo go when I’m not Ladybug?” She’s already looking upwards, trying to keep abreast of the akuma’s position. “Spots on.”

She likes this feeling, the heat and the light and the sudden sureness that she can do what she needs to. There is power, and for now it chooses to live inside her and she feels — delirious, blessed. The familiar weight of her yoyo is settled on her hip. “Oh good, it worked.”

She can feel, more than hear, more than anything else, a quiet tickle of exasperation crawling up her neck, light as a bug.

The yoyo propels her back onto the roof, which is growing alarmingly sticky. She picks her way carefully through spots of clean, green tile as she runs, on the lookout for half a library and a smudge of dark leather. She can see them: a fluttering up ahead, behind a line of zig-zagging black. He’s leading them towards the Seine. _Clever cat._

She slides down the shingles of the next roof, propelling herself upwards at the last second. Higher is better.

He tumbles under an arm, sliding over to the roof behind the whirling mass of paper. He sees her, she can see his eyes slide, just briefly, to look her full in the face before he returns his attention to the transformed figure in front of him. He gives nothing away, sly and seamless. She doesn’t try to stop the swell of pride she feels cracking behind her breast.

Tiles crumble beneath her, footing treacherous. They clatter on the street below and she can see the tense line of the shoulder _ready to turn_ , before she vaults lower, swinging in a wide arc parallel to their gaze. Their attention is shifted, though, divided. Searching for her and swatting at Chat as he comes close and closer but never close enough.

She launches up, attaching herself to a rustling back as the akumatized victim whirls comically in an attempt to shake her. She reaches forwards, grasping wildly at his cloak, looking for anything beneath the pages that could be the key to ending this long, exhausting fight when she is finally bucked off, somersaulting in the air to land gracefully beside her partner.

“Nice of you to join me, bugaboo.”

She narrows her eyes at the figure before them, searching. “It’s there.”

“My Lady?”

“On his wrist, do you see it?”

“Of course I do. You know cats have excellent night vision.”

“It’s three in the afternoon, Chat.”

“Well,” he starts, “doesn’t that just mean they’ve also got really good day vision?”

“Wouldn’t it mean the opposite?” she snorts, but there’s a smile curling the corners of her mouth. She vaults backwards, creating distance while she calls up her lucky charm. He doesn’t have to ask, he’s already darting forwards, ready to make more time for her: however long she needs. She thinks, briefly, ( _guiltily_ , though she can’t quite say why), that even without the mask she is very, very lucky.

She jumps away; a perfect front-flip she could never pull off without the grace her kwami provides. The jutting chimney on the next roof over provides enough cover for her to take a breath: perfect leverage when she decides to head back into the fray. Chat still has their attention drawn, although she can see him losing ground. Each careful guard against any fast-flung blobs of black stick fast to his baton, and even from here the added weight is obvious. She needs to be fast.

The light draws their attention, even more than her loud declaration of “Lucky Charm!”, and the swivel midair, pages fluttering wildly and taking an exaggerated moment to settle into place. She vaults upwards, forwards, hands already reaching, grasping, as she dodges the ballistic goo aimed right for her head.

A dark saucepan falls into her open hand. Interesting.

Her eyes are already scanning, looking wildly around for an advantage to press as she tumbles over to her partner. Nothing’s lighting, and she starts to feel the uncomfortable press of distress against her temples as she stands beside him.

“What’s the plan?” he asks, and she doesn’t have an answer, yet, when another mass of dark gelatin comes rushing towards them.

It’s going to hit him, she can see it slowed through the magic of her mask, and he’s raising his baton to deflect but it’s already too heavy, and he’s too slow. Her arm comes up before she can think it through, large pan easily batting the mass away. It flies backwards, aim perfectly true, and hits the villain right between the eyes.

“How did you do that?” he asks, looking bewildered and grateful, and she chokes back a laugh. “I think it’s non-stick.”

They advance in perfect unison, slowly. Silently. The villain circles wildly, blinded. It’s a chance she has to take. She darts forwards, already reaching, saucepan casually clipped at her waist. It’s so _close—_

An arm reaches out, trapping her wrist in a hold so tight she can imagine the _crack_. She frowns and pulls forwards, creating an opening, and she doesn’t have to say a word for him to be there already, to _know_.

“I was always a good student,” he smirks. “I guess it’s time to go back to hitting the books.”

His baton comes down, heavy, on their arm, and they shriek and let go, arm flying wildly backwards. The long sleeve of their costume pushes upwards, exposing the possessed item dangling there. He swipes it from the cord tied at their wrist, pulling it free with a few loose strands as they make desperately for the next roof over.

They don’t bother screaming. They are already running, _flying_ , as far and fast as they possibly can absent the akumatized object. They’re going so _fast_.

“Ladybug!” Chat yells, tearing the bookmark apart. She runs for the akuma, sweeping it up with less grace than usual. She’s still running, but the person they were fighting has stopped, passing into unconsciousness in the space between this building and the next. And dropping like a stone.

“Miraculous Ladybug!” She yells, simultaneously throwing the object into the air and diving to catch the falling figure. They hadn’t expected the reckless disregard, the absurd attempt to continue even without the tool that granted them these powers. She stretches, fingers reaching, and collects the civilian to her, depositing them on the nearest balcony just as the butterflies pass overhead, removing the broken eave that has served as her anchoring point.

She doesn’t hear him call her, and maybe he doesn’t. But he’s there in an instant, catching her around the waist roughly, his baton slowing their fall in an angled vault to the ground. They’re off, she can tell, they won’t make the landing quite right and she tenses her legs and her arms and gets ready for impact but instead . . . She’s twisted, suddenly, thrown askew in the air and she isn’t sure what’s happening until it’s already happened. Chat cradles her against his chest, arm cushioning her from the curb below them.

“Oh Chat, your arm!” she exclaims, running her hands along it as though she can tease out any injury. He laughs but his arm remains stiff on the ground. “It’s alright, my Lady. Only bruised, I think.”

She makes a worried noise in the back of her throat. And then her eyes flick up to his face.

The thought comes unbidden, before she even thinks to stop it. _His father is going to be so mad_. Gentle fingers trace the scratch, barely feeling anything through the gloves.

Chat smiles, all bright perfect teeth, and says (dramatically), “I would take a million falls for my Lady.” And she can hear the beeping, frantic now as her hand lingers against his cheek and still neither one lets go.

“We’re going to de-transform.” She says.

His eyes don’t move from her face. “We are.”

There’s another beat, then two, and she knows if she doesn’t move now she never will so she stands back, haltingly, and offers a hand to help him up.

“Another day then, my Lady.” He salutes jauntily with two fingers and she can see the disappointment on his face. It stings, burning at the edges of her mask and she smiles just so she can close her eyes. “Thank you for your service, Chat.”

It sounds so grave, so serious and it makes the guilt so obvious that he pauses as he turns. “It’s a choice I will keep continuing to make. Hero of Paris!” he exclaims suddenly, and she starts as he puts his hands on his hips and strikes a pose. He relaxes all at once when he sees her watching, and drops his voice to a stage-whisper. “Besides, I think they’ll stop making me statues if I stop showing up.” Then, of all _audacious_ things, he winks at her, before leaping to the nearest rooftop.

She gasps a laugh, even as she feels a weight like stone settle heavily in her gut.

* * *

 

 When he walks into the classroom it’s so striking on his perfect skin she can feel herself actually flinch. Classmates crowd around him, marveling at the blemish. They ask him prying questions and he laughs stiffly and fields them with a practiced grace and no answers.

When he sits she notes the way his arm hangs like stone at his side, the way he rolls just slightly into his seat with a grace that can’t be copied. She can’t see his face anymore, see the careful smile, the careful mask that hides something wild and free underneath.

Even as she feels the heavy beast guilt claw its way back up her throat, she turns her head aside and thinks, _There are a million blond boys in Paris_.

 


End file.
